{"id":2868,"date":"2011-04-29T18:25:53","date_gmt":"2011-04-29T22:25:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/slacktivist\/?p=2868"},"modified":"2011-04-29T18:25:53","modified_gmt":"2011-04-29T22:25:53","slug":"never-assume","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2011\/04\/29\/never-assume\/","title":{"rendered":"Never assume"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

My all-time favorite photo cutline from the Associated Press was for a picture of President Barack Obama and Pope Benedict XVI. It read: \u201cPope Benedict XVI (left) welcomes U.S. President Barack Obama (right) at the Vatican.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s difficult to imagine a reader for whom the words \u201cPope Benedict XVI\u201d and \u201cPresident Barack Obama\u201d are in any way meaningful while also requiring those \u201cleft\u201d and \u201cright\u201d designations to tell them apart. I can\u2019t imagine anyone looking at that photo and thinking, \u201cWait, is Benedict the black guy in the suit or the old white guy in the robe?\u201d<\/p>\n

But this is AP policy and a basic rule of newspaper journalism: Never assume that readers know something you haven\u2019t explicitly told them.<\/p>\n

For photo cutlines, that means identifying every person and clearly indicating who is who, even if it seems totally obvious. \u201cPhiladelphia Phillies first baseman Ryan Howard (left) follows through on a two-run home run as Atlanta Braves catcher Brian McCann (right) looks on \u2026\u201d Oh, so the guy swinging the bat is the batter<\/em> and the guy in the catcher\u2019s equipment is the catcher?<\/em> OK, then. Again, if the reader doesn\u2019t understand from the photograph itself who is the batter and who is the catcher, then nothing else about the cutline is going to make a lick of sense to them either. Anyone who needs to be told \u201cright\u201d and \u201cleft\u201d in that photo is unlikely to know what is meant by \u201ca two-run home run.\u201d<\/p>\n

But AP photographers always add those right and left designations because the rule is a good rule: Never assume that readers know something you haven\u2019t explicitly told them.<\/p>\n

AP\u2019s reporters, unfortunately, don\u2019t stick to this rule anywhere near as meticulously. Almost no reporters do anymore.<\/p>\n

They follow the rule in some of its forms \u2014 scrupulously identifying the title of even the most well-known public officials on first reference, for instance \u2014 but utterly disregard it in many other circumstances.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s understandable, because sticking to this rule can often seem clunky or heavy-handed \u2014 as in those cutlines above. An artful allusion becomes less artful when it has to be explained. In other contexts, it may be wholly appropriate to write:<\/p>\n

\u201cI am shocked \u2026 shocked,\u201d the spokesman said, doing his best Claude Rains impression.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And it can seem laborious and inelegant, in the context of newspaper journalism, to have to render that:<\/p>\n

\u201cI am shocked, shocked,\u201d the spokesman said, quoting a line from the 1942 film Casablanca, in which Claude Rains\u2019 character ironically and insincerely feigns indignation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Or it can make you feel almost like you\u2019re insulting your readers\u2019 intelligence. Think back to the 2008 presidential campaign, when an exhausted candidate Barack Obama told an Oregon crowd that \u201cover the last 15 months we\u2019ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I\u2019ve now been in fifty \u2026 seven states? I think one left to go. One left to go. Alaska and Hawaii.\u201d<\/p>\n

When reporting on a gaffe like that it seems perfectly safe to assume that the readers of your newspaper know that there are, in fact, only 50 and not 57 states. But the rule says that you must never assume. The rule says that you must correct such misstatements by supplying the correct information as close to the misstatement as possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve now been in fifty \u2026 seven states?\u201d Sen. Obama said. There are only 50 states.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That proximity matters \u2014 corrections further down in a story can get lost or cut or ignored by readers who never get that far. But placing the correction directly after the misstatement can come across as snarky, as though it\u2019s set-up \u2026 punchline. And getting all that right \u2014 the correction itself, the proper placement, the proper tone \u2014 is a lot of work that can just seem unnecessary because, come on, be serious, who doesn\u2019t already know that there are only 50 states? Can\u2019t we just assume that readers already know that?<\/p>\n

The rule says no. No you can\u2019t. The rule says you can never assume that readers know something you haven\u2019t explicitly told them. And it\u2019s a good rule.<\/p>\n

Let me give you an example as to why it\u2019s a good rule, and why our failure to abide by it \u2014 while understandable \u2014 has had grim consequences.<\/p>\n

A friend of mine works for another paper where he handled the birther story this week. The lede and first dozen or so grafs of the story were reaction from local tea partiers to President Barack Obama\u2019s getting Hawaii to release the long form birth certificate to supplement the legal certificate they give every other Hawaiian citizen, and which Obama had already released to great fanfare back in June of 2008. The story mentioned that earlier release of the normal birth certificate, but only briefly and way, way down in the story. So he moved that vital piece of information up toward the top, closer to the many quoted assertions from the tea partiers that the president ought to have responded to their questions sooner. That got him in hot water with his bosses, who moved that information back down to the nether regions of the story because, he was told, he should assume that readers were smart enough to know that already.<\/p>\n

The result was an article that allowed a false assertion \u2014 Obama never released this information before \u2014 to go unchallenged for more than a dozen paragraphs. That\u2019s a violation of one rule (proximity between misstatement and correction) based on reasoning that violates another rule (never assume that readers know something you haven\u2019t explicitly told them).* The result, in other words, was a story that elevated misinformation and diminished the correction \u2014 a story that will likely end up reinforcing the ever-mutating fantasies of birtherism and after-birtherism.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t mean to pick on one reporter or one set of editors \u2014 this is a problem across the board. I think Christiane Amanpour is a top-notch journalist, but as David Folkenflik pointed out on NPR\u2019s \u201cAll Things Considered<\/a>,\u201d she allowed the assertions of birthers to stand uncorrected in recent interviews:<\/p>\n

Some television interviews recently \u2013 and there have been a bunch \u2013 notably failed to contradict Donald Trump or others casting doubt on where Mr. Obama was born.<\/p>\n

NBC\u2019s Meredith Vieira and ABC\u2019s Christiane Amanpour acknowledged those remarks passively. Amanpour did not challenge the Reverend Franklin Graham when he said this\u2026<\/p>\n

Reverend FRANKLIN GRAHAM (President, Billy Graham Evangelistic Association): The president, I know, has some issues to deal with here. He can solve this whole birth certificate issue pretty quickly. I don\u2019t know why he can\u2019t produce that.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I would guess that Amanpour was thinking the same thing as those newspaper editors \u2014 that it was safe to assume that viewers already knew the truth, that it might seem to insult viewers\u2019 intelligence to follow Graham\u2019s false claims with a statement of the actual facts. But the result again is an interview that winds up reinforcing Graham\u2019s bogus claims without ever challenging them.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re the teacher of a class with 30 students and two of them fail the final exam, then you might conclude that those two students have failed to learn. If you\u2019re the teacher of a class with 30 students and 20 of them fail the final exam, then you should probably conclude that you have failed to teach. That is the conclusion that newspaper journalists should be taking from the relentless barrage of polls showing that a substantial plurality of their readers believe many things that are demonstrably untrue.<\/p>\n

If 5 percent of your readers aren\u2019t sure what country the president was born in, then it\u2019s possible to laugh at those wacky fringe-dwellers. When 35 percent of your readers aren\u2019t sure, it means the newspaper is failing to do its job \u2014 and there\u2019s nothing funny about that.<\/p>\n

A simple step toward correcting that failure would be for us to go back to following our own rule: Never assume that readers know something you haven\u2019t explicitly told them. That means that whenever a statement of incorrect information is quoted in the paper, it should be followed closely thereafter with an explicit statement of the correct information:<\/p>\n

\u201cI just got back from the state capital in Philadelphia,\u201d Rep. Smith said. Pennsylvania\u2019s state capital is in Harrisburg.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Anything less than that increases the number of readers who think Philadelphia is the capital. \u201cI know it is because I read it somewhere,\u201d they say. And they did. Just as they read that President Obama never released his birth certificate until this week.<\/p>\n

\u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013<\/p>\n

* This also highlights the problem of a lack of meaningful diversity in newsrooms. It would not have been possible to shrug off my friend\u2019s concerns if someone like Baratunde Thurston<\/a> had been present to explain that birtherism isn\u2019t just an amusing abstract oddity. But of course even the presence of such a person would not be meaningful without the corresponding presence of someone willing to listen to them.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My all-time favorite photo cutline from the Associated Press was for a picture of President Barack Obama and Pope Benedict XVI. It read: \u201cPope Benedict XVI (left) welcomes U.S. President Barack Obama (right) at the Vatican.\u201d It\u2019s difficult to imagine a reader for whom the words \u201cPope Benedict XVI\u201d and \u201cPresident Barack Obama\u201d are in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10,24],"class_list":["post-2868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-agnotology","tag-journalism"],"yoast_head":"\nNever assume<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"My all-time favorite photo cutline from the Associated Press was for a picture of President Barack Obama and Pope Benedict XVI. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Never assume","description":"My all-time favorite photo cutline from the Associated Press was for a picture of President Barack Obama and Pope Benedict XVI. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2868\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}